


pull me back from things divine

by aplaceforsteaks



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 10:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19083439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aplaceforsteaks/pseuds/aplaceforsteaks
Summary: "And drunk we set the world to rightsAs we fell and hit our heads upon the curbYou make me laugh until I dieCan you think of any better way to choke?"





	pull me back from things divine

**Author's Note:**

> Songfic inspired by "Glory" by Bastille. I haven't been able to get this idea out of my head since I really listened to the song.

The summer after they graduated high school, Dennis and Mac shook off Charlie and Dee at some house party they had stumbled upon and snuck out the front door, shoulders knocking together as they made their way back to where Dennis had left his brand-new Range Rover parked on a side street a few blocks away. They had laughed and blasted 80s synthpop all night, Dennis driving aimlessly out of the city, away from everything familiar. 

It took two hours to find a suitable spot, and technically they were trespassing, but finally Dennis stopped the car in the parking lot below a hiking trail, the dirt lot empty except for them. Wordlessly, Dennis had stepped out of the driver’s seat and climbed on top of the hood of his car, leaning back against the windshield and looking up at the stars peeking out from behind the clouds. Mac had rolled a joint for the two of them as they lay next to one another, passing the joint back and forth while both of them kept their eyes firmly fixed on the sky above them.

Mac doesn’t remember what they talked about that night. It must have been the same banter as always, starting the arguments that they still carried on today. Not important enough to remember. What Mac does remember is how Dennis’s body had felt when it was pressed up against his, touching from shoulder to ankle and sharing the same smoky breath. What he remembers is how Dennis had finally turned his eyes away from the sky and fixed them on Mac, so close their noses were barely touching. He remembers the smoke curling between them as the joint fizzled out and the butt dropped to the ground. And he remembers—cherishes, even—the way that Dennis’s eyes had fluttered shut as he drew nearer, nearer, until there was no space left between them at all.

The next morning Mac had said that he was too drunk to remember a thing, and Dennis had agreed. Mac wonders, now, if Dennis had been lying, too, or if it was really so unimportant that he could forget. It wasn’t Mac’s first kiss, nor was it Dennis’s, but it was the first time a kiss had really meant something, had felt like so much more than the press of lips against each other. 

The summer after Dennis comes home from North Dakota, Mac is left to close the bar with him at 2 a.m. on a hot night in June. Both of them are a little bit tipsy and on their way to drunk; they take shots in between wiping down tables and locking doors, griping about the state Charlie had left the floor in when he left hours ago. Even the regulars are gone now; the clink of their shot glasses echoes through the empty bar each time they slam them down, empty, on the surface of the bar. 

Dennis grabs two forty-ounce bottles from the keg room and locks the door behind them, leaving the two of them standing in the stillness of the humid summer air. Mac uncaps his and clinks it against Dennis’s before walking a few steps to sit down heavily on the curb. It’s late, but he’s not tired, and he doesn’t want to go home. 

Dennis joins him on the curb, taking a long swig out of his bottle.

“Is that the North Star?” he asks, gesturing to a particularly bright light above them.

“Nah, man, that’s just a plane,” Mac points out. “It’s moving, see?”

Dennis snorts and takes another drink.

Mac has lost count of the nights they’ve spent like this, drinking on the curb or on the hood of a car or on the roof of a building, simply sitting next to one another and enjoying the unspoken conversation that carries through the silence. There’s no need to talk when they understand each other so completely; any question is already answered in the hunch of Dennis’s shoulders or in the way Mac spits into the street in front of them. Dennis looks unemotional, betraying no hints on his expressionless face, but Mac can see in the way the wrinkles around his eyes are more relaxed than he’s seen in months that Dennis is feeling calm, if not a bit thoughtful. It reminds him of the way Dennis used to look at him back when life was thrilling, when they were the new owners of a bar and their entire lives were stretched ahead of them.

Sighing, Mac lays down on his back, folding one arm behind his head and using the other to set his drink down. Dennis looks at him, a question forming on his lips, but rather than protest he lays down too, just far enough away that their shoulders don’t touch.

“Do you remember that night when we drove out to the woods and looked at the stars? It must have been after we left high school. It was right after I got the Range Rover,” Dennis says into the stillness of the night.

Mac’s heart skips a beat. So he does remember.

“Yeah, man, that was an awesome time,” Mac says back, unable to keep a slight waver from escaping along with the words. “We should do that again. Escape all this, just the two of us.”

“I’d like that,” Dennis says softly, so quiet that Mac can barely hear it. In between them, Dennis’s hand shifts, moves sideways along the concrete, and their pinky fingers brush together. Boldly (because Mac is so, so tired of hiding) Mac turns his hand over palm-up and lets Dennis thread his fingers in between his own, an unspoken acknowledgement of the past twenty-four years between then and now.

Mac turns his head to look at Dennis, and he’s smiling just a little bit. It’s the happiest Mac’s seen him in months. After all this, after everything they’ve been through and done to each other, who would have thought they’d end up here after all?

Mac is forty-two, but Dennis, across from him, is just eighteen, unkempt curls falling down onto his forehead as he turns to look Mac in the eyes. Deep in Dennis’s blue eyes, Mac can see himself at eighteen reflected back at him, gangly and scruffy and awkward as he had been almost twenty-five years ago.

Mac tears his eyes away from the boy across from him and turns his face up towards the sky and the few stars that shine brightly enough to cut through the lights of the city. How many times has he done this, looking up to the stars and praying beyond all hope that one day his soul would float up like a wisp of smoke to the heaven that lay beyond? How many times has he felt Dennis pulling him back, a tether to this world, the only love strong enough to tear his eyes away from the future beyond death? Dennis says nothing, but through the spaces where their fingers touch Mac can hear his voice as clear as day in his ears, telling him “stop looking up for heaven, waiting to be buried.”

One day Mac will be buried in the earth, and his soul will escape into the cosmos, but for now his soul is burning alive in his chest, and there is a beautiful boy lying next to him, at once fifteen and twenty-three and thirty-five and forty-two and every moment in between. There’s nothing standing between him and heaven now, only empty air, but Mac tears his gaze away from the stars and fixates instead on the bright point shining beside him on the ground.

Heaven can wait; Dennis can’t. 

(And if Mac never makes it to heaven, if his soul is instead dragged down through the asphalt and concrete and soil to hell burning below, he still wouldn’t regret the short-lived happiness he chose instead.)


End file.
